


Coming Home

by toyhto



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Muggle, Alternate Universe - World War II, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 06:31:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10656870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: "The world has changed, you know.""It really hasn't,” Remus said but sounded a bit hesitant.





	Coming Home

He thought he remembered Remus Lupin from before the war but couldn’t be sure. There had been a boy in the village, a boy whose clothes had been worn and shabby and whose sad eyes had been following him through the back window of the family car. _Perhaps the kid likes cars_ , he had thought, and then as he grew a bit older _perhaps he’s jealous_ and then _perhaps he despises of me because I’m rich and he’s not._ But it had been more than six years ago, six years that felt like a lifetime, and now that they were sitting in the same train from London to York he wasn’t certain at all. So, he asked.  
  
“Did I know you? Before, I mean?”  
  
Remus looked at him quite sharply as if to imply that he didn’t know him presently, either. “Of course you didn’t.”  
  
“But we’re from the same village.”  
  
“Yes.” Remus turned to look through the window. The English countryside was sliding past them, all the hills and fences and sheep and houses. Sirius was actually a bit surprised to find out it still existed, like nothing had happened at all. He wasn’t sure if _he_ existed anymore, certainly not like he had. Before.  
  
“Well, then,” he said, as Remus kept quiet. He had asked the man’s name as soon as they had sat down facing each other, and Remus had said it quickly as if hoping he wouldn’t catch it. Too bad that he rather liked challenges. He had asked where _Remus Lupin_ was from and quite soon it had become clear that they had lived only a few miles away from each other as kids. “Did you know me?”  
  
“That’s a stupid thing to ask,” Remus said which of course was true, but stupid things were what Sirius did these days. He was going back home, for example.  
  
“No, it’s not.”  
  
“Of course I know who you are,” Remus said then, rubbing his knee like he had been a bit nervous. Sirius hoped it was good nervous and not that he had, as a rich and oblivious kid, done something very stupid Remus was now remembering. “You’re a _Black._ ”  
  
“I can’t help it, you know,” he said and Remus threw a glare at him. He ignored it. It would take at least an hour still for the train to get to York. They had plenty of time and Remus Lupin was somehow quite fascinating, perhaps because he looked like he had been angry at everything and everyone, which was of course quite understandable, but also he was pointing some of that anger towards Sirius. “So, you’re from the village. Was your dad a farmer?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Is he still?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“So he’s probably one of our tenants.”  
  
“Yes”, Remus said, watching through the window.  
  
“You could have told me,” Sirius said, “that you recognised me.”  
  
“Why?” Remus asked and then sighed. “And besides, I wasn’t sure at first. You don’t exactly look like you used to.”  
  
“Really?” There were so many roads to take from there. _So, how handsome have I got since you last saw me_ , would have been one, had he not been quite certain that Remus would have walked away after that. He found that he absolutely wanted to keep on talking with Remus Lupin. Perhaps he was merely frightened about going back home. “How I used to look like?”  
  
“Rich,” Remus said, biting his lower lip which was more fascinating than it probably should have been, “like someone who doesn’t know a thing about anything.”  
  
“And how about now?”  
  
“Now you look like someone who’s not sure they wanted to come back.”  
  
He sat straight on his seat. _Damn._  
  
“I’m right,” Remus said watching him carefully, with a voice that had a hint of hesitation in it. “You ain’t sure.”  
  
“I’m glad I didn’t die.”  
  
“Aren’t we all,” Remus said, and Sirius turned to look through the window. He could feel Remus’ eyes on his skin. He tried to remember the boy from the village, the boy with worn clothes, but all he could remember was the smell of smoke and burning and then the unbelieving realisation that he was still alive.  
  
“It’s not that I’m disappointed to be alive,” he said though he didn’t know why, “because I’m not, not at all, I wanted to get through it more than anything, except… except for perhaps a few times when the alternative looked so much easier. It’s just that I don’t know what anything is anymore.”  
  
“You’re a rich kid going back home,” Remus said but not unpleasantly. Sirius wondered why Remus was still talking to him. He thought Remus’ voice had gone a bit softer even though the words were still sharp. And quite true, of course.  
  
“My brother died,” he said, “or actually he went missing, but that was almost four years ago. He’s dead.”  
  
“Shit,” Remus said. “Sorry.”  
  
“They’re going to look at me and think _it’s you. It’s you and not him. It should have been him._ ”  
  
“What?”  
  
“My parents. They always liked him better. He _was_ better, too.”  
  
“I’m sure that’s not –“  
  
“Shut up,” he said and felt immediately bad because Remus flinched. He tried to apologise but couldn’t form the words, and Remus watched him with narrowed eyes like trying to decide whether he was an actual human being after all. “So, I’m nervous,” he said then, “or horrified. I thought about staying in London, you know, renting a place and just not going home. But I suppose they’d hire a detective or something. To find me.”  
  
“Why are you telling me this?” Remus asked, which was an excellent question indeed.  
  
 “I don’t know.”  
  
“We would have never talked to each other if it wasn’t for the war.”  
  
“So something good came out of it after all,” he said and then thought he saw something flickering in Remus’ eyes. “I’m sorry, you know.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
“I would have never talked to you,” he said, “probably, who knows. If we weren’t sitting in the same train, both in uniforms, coming home from the same war.”  
  
“I’m nervous, too,” Remus said, staring at him like he were weighting Sirius’ reaction. He leant towards Remus, barely a little but Remus straightened his back anyway, and then he found he was actually glad that this tall tired-looking man was still talking to him. _Weird._ He usually had to be a little drunk to be glad about anything these days.  
  
“Why?” he asked.  
  
“My mom died.”  
  
“Oh, fuck. I’m sorry.”  
  
“Yes, well,” Remus said but didn’t look away from him. “She got ill. That happens.”  
  
“And you were away.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Couldn’t they give you a leave or something?”  
  
“It went quite fast. And I don’t think they would have cared.”  
  
“But surely –“  
  
“So, that’s it,” Remus said, “I’m going back home to see if my dad’s a wreck and he’s going to see that I’m a wreck and there we are, then. I thought about staying in London. But I couldn’t.”  
  
“Because you love him.”  
  
“Yes,” Remus said, finally looking away from him, and he took a deep breath, “he’s my dad.”  
  
Sirius felt quite bitter at that. He tried not to let it show, though.  
  
“So,” he said instead, “you’re a wreck, then.”  
  
Remus bit his lip. “Well. What else could come out of something like that?”  
  
“We won, though,” he said, and Remus gave out a sharp laugh.  
  
“Yeah,” Remus said, turning to look through the window, at the hills and the sheep and the sunshine, or perhaps at the world that hadn’t ended after all. “We did.”  
  
“I’m going to come to see you,” Sirius said, not sure why, “at your place. In the village.”  
  
“No you aren’t.”  
  
“Yes I am. The world has changed, you know.”  
  
“It really hasn't,” Remus said but sounded a bit hesitant.  
  
  
**  
  
  
He went to find Remus’ cottage three days later. It was smaller and darker than he had thought and he tried very much to hide his surprise. He had spent six years in fucking trenches. He wouldn’t be upset about the places people actually lived in not two miles away from where he had grown up.  
  
“So,” he said when Remus kept standing in the middle of the room, silent and clearly uncomfortable. “Where’s your dad?”  
  
“Working. He wouldn’t let me help, says that I need to rest.” Remus gave out a small and nervous laugh that was, frankly speaking, adorable. Sirius bit his teeth together. “Like resting is going to fix me.”  
  
“You don’t look like you need fixing.”  
  
“Sure I do,” Remus said, grabbing a wooden chair. “Sit down. If you want to.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“I could make you some tea.”  
  
“No,” he said and stood up again. Remus was watching him with nervous flicker in his eyes. “I didn’t come to… to make you feel like you need to make me tea.”  
  
“Why did you come? I really have nothing else besides tea.”  
  
“Let’s go out,” he said, “let’s walk a little.”  
  
“Someone will see us.”  
  
“I didn’t realise you were ashamed of me.”  
  
Remus laughed out, barely audible but still here. Sirius felt a bit lighter for a second. “I meant that someone will see _you_ walking with me. They’ll wonder what you’re doing.”  
  
“Surely they can recognise a man walking with a friend.”  
  
“A friend?”  
  
“I haven’t talked with anyone as much as I’ve with you,” he said, turning around and walking to the door, and there was something restless lying inside him when he heard Remus’ footsteps following, “not after I came back. And not while I’ve been sober.”  
  
“So,” Remus asked as he shut the door behind him, “you’re one of those who try to drink it away.”  
  
The sun was very bright and the village looked exactly like it had. It was all very odd, like someone was playing a joke on them. _Look_ , they said, _you were crawling in mud trying not to die and trying not to kill someone else and this, this was here all along. The birds were singing as your ears were ringing with bombs and death.  
  
_ “Not really,” he said and started walking a narrow road in between the fields. “I know it won’t help. It only makes you numb, I suppose.”  
  
“But that’s better.”  
  
“No,” he said and shrugged, “yes, sometimes. I don’t know. So, your leg.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
He slowed down. Remus bit his lower lip and Sirius tried not to stare at his mouth. The limp wasn’t too bad, it was more like a shadow of something in the way Remus walked. “Just tell me if I walk too fast.”  
  
“I can take it.”  
  
“Yes, but it’ll hurt afterwards, won’t it?”  
  
Remus said nothing, which of course was a quite loud answer.  
  
“I got a few scars,” Sirius said, “they took shards out of my left shoulder something like two years ago, so that’s a big one. Relatively speaking. But nothing that can be seen when I have clothes on.”  
  
“You lucky thing.”  
  
“I don’t know,” he said, “I feel like they grabbed me and shook me and all the pieces went wrong inside. But I still look the same.”  
  
“Who is they?”  
  
“What?” Remus was now walking beside him. He thought he could feel the way Remus limped just a little. He felt it in his own rhythm as he walked, and it was weirdly comforting in a way that was probably false. “I don’t know. _They._ ”  
  
“Where were you?”  
  
“North Africa, mostly, then in France. But I didn’t mean the enemy. I meant… anyone, anywhere, who’s responsible.”  
  
“I killed a boy,” Remus said, “when I had been there for, like, five months or something. I tried not to. But I thought he’d kill me.”  
  
“He probably would have.”  
  
“Yes,” Remus said, watching the fields that were getting brown with autumn, “but he didn’t. I did. I think that was when I started thinking that we were all to blame.”  
  
“We didn’t start it, though.”  
  
“Nor did he,” Remus said, “he was perhaps seventeen or something like that. I was eighteen. When he was dead, he still looked terrified. I had shot him through his neck.”  
  
“Fuck.”  
  
“Sometimes I think it would have been easier if I had let him decide. Perhaps I would be dead now.” Remus took a sharp breath. “But I never actually wanted to die. It’s weird, you know, it’s like you’re in actual hell for _years_ and still you’re grasping for your life like it has any worth at all.”  
  
“Yeah,” he said. These were their fields, he thought, the fields of his family. One more hill and they could see the main building. And it was all like it had been, beautiful in a very quiet way, a world in which nothing moved and nothing changed.  “I know.”  
  
“Dad said he was proud of me. I laughed.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“Nothing. He turned around. He was in the Great War. He should know what it’s like.”  
  
“They say that it was different this time,” he said, “they say it in the newspapers. New technology. New ways to kill people. All that.”  
  
“Modern days,” Remus said in a low voice, “look what we have achieved.”  
  
They walked up the hill. Remus was limping a bit more and Sirius wished he had picked another direction. The main building of the estate looked enormous and ridiculous and a bit unreal, and of course very familiar. He thought about Remus’ tiny cottage and tried to find something to say but there was nothing.  
  
“It looks nice,” Remus said with a steady voice.  
  
“Feel free to mock me.”  
  
“No,” Remus said, “I just don’t understand what you’re doing with me.”  
  
“It’s just stone, you know,” he said, “bricks and wood and furniture and carpets and curtains and money.”  
  
“It makes all the difference.”  
  
“No, it doesn’t. Ship me to the war and I’ll die the same as anyone else.”  
  
“You didn’t, though,” Remus said, frowning slightly. He looked even thinner now that he wasn’t wearing his uniform. His sleeves were a bit too short and Sirius wondered if his brown coat was something like six years old.  
  
“I think I’ll go back to London,” he said, “as soon as I figure out what I’m going to do there. I can’t bear it here.”  
  
“With a house so small.”  
  
“You love your dad,” Sirius said, “I’m jealous of that, you know. I really am. Like, so jealous it makes me feel like a bad person.”  
  
“Shit,” Remus said, “why the heck would you –“  
  
“I don’t,” he said, “I really don’t. I don’t _hate_ them. They might hate me, I don’t know, perhaps it’s more like… mutual dislike. They would be so much happier if it had been Reg who came home.”  
  
“I remember your brother,” Remus said, turning to watch him. He looked away. “My dad liked him, kept saying that he’ll do this village well.”  
  
“He was the best thing in the family.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“And I think he was terrified there,” Sirius said, biting at his teeth, “like, all of us were, but he was afraid of jumping fences as we were kids, he was afraid of dogs and climbing to the trees and all that. I kept hoping it would end before he was old enough to go, but of course it didn’t. And I asked them to send me where he was but they refused.”  
  
“It’s really not your fault, you know.”  
  
“Sometimes I hope he’s actually dead,” Sirius said, “because the alternative, him being there somewhere, alone and terrified and God knows what, is just -”  
  
“He’s dead,” Remus said with a steady, low voice, “after three years he’s certainly dead.”  
  
“Oh, fuck, _fucking hell,_ this is…”  
  
He sat down onto the dying grass. Remus stood beside him and didn’t say a word even when he failed to keep his breaths even. Certainly it was a bit too late to cry now, and he pushed his palms against the ground and bit his teeth together and then a little later wiped his face with dirty hands. When he finally stood up again, Remus looked him into eyes without looking embarrassed at all.  
  
They walked back to Remus’ cottage. Remus’ father had got back from the fields. Sirius said a hasty goodbye on the road, turned around and walked back to the home he had come back to from what seemed to be another world.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“So,” Sirius said, “you didn’t come back home for a girl.”  
  
He thought Remus froze beside him but perhaps he was just imagining. They were sitting on a bench barely outside the village. People were walking past them, watching them with curious and sometimes suspicious eyes, and Sirius wished he could have grabbed them on their shoulders and said _half a year before it would have been perfectly fine for me to die beside this man, why can’t I sit with him on a bench._ But perhaps there was no reason to upset his parents further now that they were already upset about him coming home.  
  
He had tried to stay away from Remus. It had gone very well until afternoon. When Remus had opened the door for him, it had been clearly implied but not said aloud that they had seen each other less than twenty-four hours ago. But Remus had still agreed to walk through the village with him, which he considered a small victory.  
  
“A girl,” Remus said now, his voice low and somehow hoarse.  
  
“A girlfriend. A person you fancy.”  
  
“You didn’t either.”  
  
“I think the war kind of got me out of it,” he said, “you know, the whole thing, finding a pretty girl to marry. At least it got postponed. I was never going to do it, of course.”  
  
Remus glanced him quite sharply but didn’t ask.  
  
“You, then,” he said, “tell me. Is there a girl you fancy?”  
  
“No,” Remus said, kept quiet for a long while and then added, “not really my thing.”  
  
“Fine,” he said, “great. So, your thing -“  
  
“ _Sirius._ ”  
  
“Sorry,” he said and bit at his lip. “Too much?”  
  
“You’re being very rude,” Remus said, but he looked at Sirius with wide, restless eyes that said something else.  
  
“Just wanted to let you know,” he said and Remus let out a shaky breath.  
  
It seemed that there was nothing one could say after that. They sat quiet for a while and Sirius wanted to say something more, something that he shouldn’t, and the words kept getting onto his mouth and he kept swallowing them. It was a good thing he didn’t know what to call it. Finally Remus said that they ought to get back and they started walking again. Once or twice Sirius let their arms slightly brush against each other, and Remus flinched but wouldn’t move further away from him. He realised his heart was pounding quite fast. _I found something_ , it said, _I think I found something lovely and precious and brilliant_ , and he answered, _no, it might not be like that._ His heart kept going anyway.  
  
“I don’t want to go back home,” he said when they could already see Remus’ cottage.  
  
“You have to.”  
  
“Hide me here. Hide me into your cupboard. I won’t make a sound.”  
  
Remus smiled and then licked his lower lip, and Sirius tried not to stare. “My dad will be surprised when he finds you there.”  
  
“Under your bed, then.”  
  
“ _Sirius._ ”  
  
“Sorry,” he said, and then added, because clearly he was as reckless and mad as his parents thought he was, “I mean it, though.”  
  
“Shut up,” Remus said with a dry voice, “perhaps you’ll forget me by tomorrow.”  
  
“I certainly won’t. I’ll be here, dragging you to walk with me.”  
  
“You’re mad.”  
  
“I’ll go now,” Sirius said, “before you tell me not to come again.”  
  
“I wouldn’t,” Remus said. Sirius walked through the hills and tried not to make anything of it, but still it rang in his head, _I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t_ , and it felt like a promise so fragile he might break it by wishing too hard.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“Once,” he said, and Remus looked up from the grass where he had been lying on his back, “I thought I died. All the noise went away, just like that, and the air was full of dust. I couldn’t see anything or hear anything or feel anything and I thought I was dead.”  
  
“You’ve been thinking about that a lot,” Remus said with a voice that was a bit rough, perhaps because it was actually quite cold and they had been sitting on a hill for at least an hour.  
  
“Yeah. Then I realised someone was lying on me. It was Mathew Watson. He looked like he could see through me but of course he was already dead.”  
  
“It was a grenade, right?”  
  
“I suppose. I crawled back and couldn’t believe I was alive. And didn’t know what the hell to do with it.”  
  
“But here you are,” Remus said, resting his head back against the ground.  
  
“Here I am,” he said and watched Remus’ chest rising and falling under the worn fabric of his coat. Yesterday they had stayed in Remus’ cottage, because Remus had had to make food for his father. He had stared at Remus with fascination that seemed to go beyond everything he could imagine. He had told himself firmly he had never actually seen anyone making food in their own home, but of course he had known that was only a part of why his eyes kept following Remus’ fingers.  
  
A day before that, the cottage had been empty and he had had an irrational moment of sheer terror he didn’t know how to explain afterwards. Of course Remus had merely been working with his father. There had been absolutely no reason to think Remus had left him and would never come back, or that Remus had died like everyone else and he was once again the only person left in the world gone mad. Later he had found out that Remus’ limp had got worse after the day’s work and that his father had got worried. Remus didn’t tell him, not exactly, Remus told bits and pieces and he figured out the rest, asked straightforward questions and knew from the way Remus got angry at him.  
  
“We should go back to London together,” he said now and saw Remus’ silent fear in a way his chest froze.  
  
“What?” Remus asked without looking at him.  
  
“I can’t stay here. I can’t bear my parents and they can’t bear me. But I won’t go if you don’t come with me.”  
  
Now Remus finally looked at him, with wide eyes and mouth half-opened. “That’s completely nuts.”  
  
“No, it’s not, and you know it.”  
  
“You’re an idiot,” Remus said, his sharp blue eyes moving on Sirius’ face.  
  
“Well, what can you do,” he said, “that’s how I am. We can stay in our town house for a while. It’s called Grimmauld Place and it’s absolutely horrifying. I’ll get some money somehow and we’ll rent our own flat.”  
  
“Of course you have a _town house_ ,” Remus said quite sharply, and Sirius had a feeling that he was being distracted.  
  
“You should study something. You would be a good teacher with that sharp tongue of yours. Kids would be terrified.”  
  
“Sorry. It’s just… a _town house._ And let me guess, it’s like a mansion.”  
  
“You’ll see. When we get there.”  
  
“I’m not coming,” Remus said, more quietly, “you know I’m not. You know that just doesn’t happen.”  
  
“We spent six years in a fucking _war_ , six years of our lives gone into that hell. No one will tell me what _just doesn’t happen_ after that.”  
  
“My dad needs me.”  
  
“You can visit,” Sirius said, “often, like every other weekend. And you’ll get a job and send him money. He’ll be happy that you’re happy.”  
  
“ _Happy?_ ”  
  
“Please,” he said. Remus had sat up and was now folding and unfolding his hands in his lap. Remus’ hair was messy and there was dead grass stuck in there and Sirius wanted to run his fingers through it. “Can’t you see it?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Tell me you want to stay here then,” he said, and Remus bit at his lower lip and looked angry already, “tell me you want to marry a pretty girl and sleep with her and have children and live in your cottage with your wife for the rest of your life.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Remus said and then froze.  
  
Sirius opened his mouth and closed it again. His limbs were heavy and his ears were ringing, and he thought about the time when he had imagined he would die and then he had lived after all. _Why_ , he had wondered. Now Remus was right _there_ , blushing hard and staring at his own hands and everything except Sirius, and he really would have wanted to lean forward and place his hands on Remus’ face, but of course he couldn’t.  
  
“We can be friends who met in a train, coming home from the war,” he said, and Remus closed his eyes and shook his head. “It’s cheaper if you share a flat. It’s practical. I’m sure everyone does it these days.”  
  
“ _Cheaper?”_ Remus asked, so obviously nervous but Sirius was so happy Remus had said anything that he found himself smiling widely. “You’re going to be an earl. You have a mansion and a town house.”  
  
“I’ll give it up,” he said, “if you come with me.”  
  
“That’s mad,” Remus said, sounding actually scared, “and besides, I don’t want you to give it up, why would I, it’s –“  
  
“It’s done,” he said, “I’ll run away. They can keep their money. You have to teach me how to make food, though.”  
  
“You’re an idiot, you really are.”  
  
“There was a boy in France, last spring. A month or two before it ended, it all seems the same now. We were both dunk and he tried to kiss me.”  
  
“Fuck,” Remus said and covered his own mouth with his palm. “Why would you tell me?”  
  
“I kissed him back,” Sirius said, “of course, though I didn’t really like him that much. But it was rather nice anyway. I had never done that before, you know.”  
  
“What happened?” Remus asked with a shaky voice.  
  
“He died.”  
  
“Shit,” Remus said, breathing in and out like he had been running. “He got to kiss you, though.”  
  
“Yes. _So._ Have you ever?”  
  
“What? No. _No._ Of course not. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t know how to… how to figure out if someone was… _shit._ ”  
  
Sirius hold his breath. His heart was drumming madly, had probably been a while, and he felt like he had done a crazy thing and was now waiting to see what came out of it. Also, he felt a bit light in the head. He watched as Remus dig his fingers into the ground looking like he had no idea he was doing it.  
  
“I always knew,” Remus said after a long silence full of Sirius’ own heartbeat inside his head, “that there was something wrong with me. Always. Like, even before the war. It was like… like there was this picture of what I should be and what I should do and I just couldn’t see myself there, really couldn’t, I tried to but it was impossible.”  
  
“It’s alright.”  
  
“No, it’s not,” Remus said and gave out a short laugh or perhaps a cry, it was difficult to tell. “It’s messed up.”  
  
“I’ll tell you something,” Sirius said.  
  
“Please don’t.”  
  
“I’ll tell you,” Sirius said, “and then you can think you know something of me that could put me to jail, possibly, I don’t know what they usually ask for a proof.”  
  
“Sirius, shut up, please just _shut up_ –“  
  
“I want to be with you,” he said, “I really do. I want to kiss you. I want to hold you and undress all your clothes and I want to kiss you on your neck and chest and stomach and thighs. Everywhere. And also I want to sleep with you. I don’t know how exactly that works but I’ve heard something and I think we could figure out the rest of it. You could do it to me, you know, if you wanted to. You could hold me naked and you could have me.”  
  
“Oh,” Remus said, looking at him with wide eyes, breathing hard. “ _Oh._ ”  
  
“Come to London with me.”  
  
“I really can’t,” Remus said with a very small voice.  
  
“That’s just bullshit.”  
  
“You’re mad.”  
  
“I could be dead, too,” he said, “but I’m not. I’m alive. And I want you and you want me too.”  
  
“Don’t say that.”  
  
“We’re alone,” he said, “there’s no one here who can hear us. I want you, I want you, I want you.”  
  
“You don’t _know_ me.”  
  
“But I will, I have time, I _lived_ , and what were the odds, really? What were the odds? We could very easily be dead now but we aren’t.”  
  
“That’s not an excuse,” Remus said, but he sounded like he didn’t know anything anymore and that, Sirius decided, was probably a good thing for his case. He leant towards Remus on the cold grass and Remus leant away from him even though they were far enough that he couldn’t have touched Remus without crawling to him first.  
  
“What are you afraid of?” he asked, not sure if it was the right thing to say but the hell with it, he was certain Remus wanted him because why else Remus had still been here. Remus would get angry at him but wouldn’t leave. “Really? You saw men dying. What can you be afraid of after that?”  
  
“Everything,” Remus said.  
  
Sirius took a sharp breath. _“Everything?_ ”  
  
“Let me go,” Remus said, “dad will be back soon, I need to be there. Let me go.”  
  
“I’m not holding you.”  
  
Remus stared at him and then swore, and he watched as Remus stood up, shook his coat and trousers probably without any gain and then started walking back to the village with hasty and unsteady steps.  
  
“I’ll come with you,” he shouted.  
  
“No,” Remus answered without turning to look at him, “no, you can’t.”  
  
“I can walk faster than you,” he said and started walking. He caught Remus with a few running steps. Remus’ limp was getting worse and Sirius settled walking next to him, close enough that Remus could have probably hit him, had he wanted to, or grab him and, well, hold him. _Anything._  
  
“Don’t,” Remus said.  
  
“I’m sorry about that walking thing I said.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“I’ll come again tomorrow.”  
  
Remus opened his mouth and suddenly Sirius was certain Remus would tell him no, _don’t come, don’t come near to me again,_ and he knew it would have been because Remus was scared and he would have come anyway but he still didn’t want to hear it. _Shit_ , he thought, _I shouldn’t have said that_ , but Remus kept staring at him and then turned his gaze away again.  
  
“I can’t tell you not to,” Remus said finally. His walking got slower. His voice sounded like he wanted to cry but knew there was no point.  
  
“Why?” he said and thought, _please please please please -_  
  
“Just come back,” Remus said. “But you must remember that I’m not as mad as you, or perhaps I am but I’m also fucking scared.”  
  
“I really, _really_ like you.”  
  
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Remus said, and then they could already see the cottage and Remus hastened his steps and didn’t say another word. A moment later Sirius watched Remus close the front door behind him. He stood there for a while and then he went back home.  
  
  
**  
  
  
He knocked on the door for longer than he probably should have. It seemed possible Remus was avoiding him, and he considered asking neighbours were Remus was but rather soon thought it was a very poor idea. He walked through the village but didn’t find Remus and thought he was probably at the fields working with his dad, which was stupid because he would hurt his leg. Sirius didn’t really want to go back home, so he tried to buy sweets and ended up having a long and one-sided conversation with a girl at the shop. He claimed it was utterly inappropriate that they had won and still there wasn’t sweets to buy in the whole fucking country it seemed, and the girl looked like she was terrified of him. Finally he gave up and walked over the hills as slowly as he could.  
  
The next day, Remus opened the door. He looked worried and worn and just stood there, and Sirius took a deep breath.  
  
“Hi,” he said then.  
  
“Hi,” Remus said, eyeing him. “I have to make food.”  
  
“I’ll come and watch,” he said.  
  
Remus frowned but didn’t answer, and Sirius followed him.  
  
“So, where were you? Working?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“And avoiding me.”  
  
“Shut up,” Remus said. “I’m going to cut the potatoes.”  
  
“Fascinating,” Sirius said and Remus threw a glance at him.  
  
He sat while Remus did it all, all the food-making stuff. He tried to imagine being someone who knew how to cut the vegetables and put them to the kettle and put the kettle on to boil and all that. He tried to imagine living in a tiny dark cottage like this. He tried to imagine waking up in a narrow bed and then looking across the room where Remus slept in his, and there was a nervous flutter in his stomach.  
  
“I was thinking,” Remus said now, staring at the kettle. “You shouldn’t come here. Someone’s going to wonder what you’re doing here. We should, like, meet at the random places.”  
  
“They’ll never buy it,” Sirius said. “They know who I am. But we are _friends._ It’s none of their business that we’re friends.”  
  
“But your kind of people aren’t friends with my kind of people.”  
  
“They can’t _see_ it, you know. They can’t see that you like me.”  
  
Remus’s shoulders tensed. “Sirius.”  
  
“Well, perhaps they can see that you like me because, well, you bear me enough to let me follow you around. But there’s no way to tell that it’s… it’s…”  
  
“Don’t do that.”  
  
“That you want to be with me. They can’t tell that. It doesn’t show on your face or anything.”  
  
“ _Sirius_ ,” Remus said with a sharp voice, “can you please not –“  
  
“I found a place,” he said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring it up so soon but now we’re already talking about it. So, there’s a cottage in our woods, or it’s probably just a shack, I used to play there with Regulus when we were kids. It’s not far but no one never goes there. I can show you the way and you can walk there by yourself if you want to, perhaps you can make it look like you’re watching birds or something like that if it makes you feel better.”  
  
He paused and waited. His heart was drumming and his palms felt quite sticky. He had remembered the shack yesterday and then this morning he had walked there. The place had been full of dust and spider webs and he had stood in the middle of it all and thought about how Remus would kiss him here, clumsily and nervously and then a bit stronger, like in haste. Remus would undress him and then he would lay down onto the creaking mattress in the corner, and he was quite sure it would hurt because how the hell it could have not to, but Remus would hold them both still and Sirius could probably smell Remus’ fucking _skin_ and it would… He didn’t actually have a clue what it would be like, and then he had walked to Remus’ cottage with slightly trembling legs.  
  
“What are you talking about?” Remus asked. His voice shook a little.  
  
“You could –,” Sirius said and then swallowed, _shit_ , he didn’t know what to call it. “You could do whatever you want. With me.”  
  
“Fucking hell,” Remus said and sat down onto the chair that creaked loudly. Sirius watched as Remus pressed his mouth tightly shut and grabbed his knees with both hands.  
  
“We don’t have to,” Sirius said as quietly as he could, because Remus looked like he was probably going to break into pieces. “Of course not. Only if you want to. And we could also, you know, do something else.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“Like,” Sirius swallowed, “we could kiss.”  
  
Remus closed his eyes.  
  
“I’d like to,” Sirius said and it came out all wrong, his voice was too high, his words were rushed, and he couldn’t help it. “I want to kiss you. You know that. I really, _really_ like you. It’s odd, you’re like the most fascinating person in the world and I don’t know why, you just are. You keep looking at me like you’re so sad no one can understand you and also you’ve decided you’ll live through anything and you’ll snap at anyone who’ll question you. I think I would have liked you even as a kid. I would have known you were something else than the rest of them. Please kiss me.”  
  
Remus sighed and then looked at him.  
  
“Please.”  
  
“It’s not that I don’t like you,” Remus said with a very quiet voice.  
  
Clearly it was a _no._  
  
“I won’t go anywhere,” Sirius said, “I swear, you’re stuck with me. I’ll come back and ask again.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“Shut up,” he said. Remus watched him as he stood up and took a few steps, but the room was too small and there was nowhere to go. “I don’t want you to be _sorry,_ I want you to –“  
  
“You don’t even realise how mad you are,” Remus said, and certainly it was unfair that Remus’ voice was now steady and he wasn’t even grabbing his knees anymore, and Sirius didn’t know where to stand or what to do and his heart felt heavy in his chest, why couldn’t Remus just – “You’re as rich as they get. You have _everything._ You could do anything you like. And you even look like that, like an American movie star, with your eyes and your jaw and your nose and your hair being like that, and still you waste your time being with me even though it’s clear that I can’t… that I won’t…”  
  
“ _Remus._ ”  
  
“You could find someone,” Remus said and swallowed, “someone better than me, and someone who would… who would do everything you…”  
  
“I can’t,” Sirius said, “it has to be you. If you won’t kiss me, I’ll just sit right here and watch you make food. _So._ My nose.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You like my nose. And my hair.”  
  
“Of course -,” Remus said and then bit his lip and went on with a bit lower voice, “- of course I like your hair.”  
  
“Thank you,” Sirius said. He could do this. He could talk to Remus and Remus would forget everything that had been said and he would ask again tomorrow, and perhaps Remus would kiss him then. His chest was aching but he could ignore it. “That’s very nice of you. And my jaw. I think you’re overestimating it. It’s really just an ordinary jaw.”  
  
“No,” Remus said, watching him, “it’s not.”  
  
“But certainly I’m not handsome enough to be a film star.”  
  
“Sirius –“  
  
“Certainly not in America at least.”  
  
“You’re the maddest person I’ve ever met,” Remus said, and there was a hint of something like a smile in his voice. “And I’m afraid I’ve met many. In the war. You’d think people you meet in the war would be as mad as it goes.”  
  
“I’m sorry to be a disappointment,” Sirius said. “Is that food ready yet? We could go to the village. You can’t really see my eyes in here, it’s too dark, and you like my eyes.”  
  
“I didn’t say –“  
  
“Yes, you did. Please, hurry.”  
  
“You know nothing about making food, do you?”  
  
“Absolutely nothing. What’s it about my eyes? Is it the colour? Or the shape?”  
  
“I like that they’re on your face,” Remus said. “Help me with the kettle.”  
  
“I really can’t.”  
  
“I’ll show you.”  
  
“That’s very risky of you.”  
  
“Well, you’re rich. You can pay for what you destroy. Now come here.”  
  
He went. Remus showed him how to pour the hot water from the kettle, and his hands kept shaking and Remus laughed at him and sounded only a little nervous. He had a feeling that Remus tried quite carefully not to touch him. Later they walked through the village and Remus stared straight forward. But it was fine. It was all fine. He would keep coming back and one day Remus would kiss him.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“Where’s the place?”  
  
“What place?”  
  
“The shack,” Remus said, not looking at him.  
  
“Oh,” he said, “it’s… not far away from here. Just over that hill and into the woods and…”  
  
“Show me.”  
  
_Kiss me_ , he wanted to say right then, _please_ , but they were walking the path in between the fields and anyone could see them. If Remus ever kissed him, surely it would happen behind locked doors. He put his hands into his pockets and kept walking and Remus followed him quietly. It was a dim day of late October and the wind felt like there were rain hidden in it.  
  
“Our servants think it’s haunted,” he said, as they walked closer and his heart got busier. “There’s a story but I don’t remember it, but anyway that’s why no one goes near to it. Our butler actually got angry at me and Reg when he found out we had been playing there.”  
  
“You’re taking me to a place that’s haunted.”  
  
“It’s really not,” he said and then he realised Remus was smiling at him. “You git. This is not fun.”  
  
“No,” Remus agreed and took a deep breath. “I try to keep from panicking, you know.”  
  
“Panicking?”  
  
“Because of what we are supposed to do there.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Not that we are going to do it,” Remus said, “because we aren’t, and certainly not today.”  
  
“So, you… you are considering…”  
  
“I’m not doing anything,” Remus said. “I’m only following you to some haunted shack in the middle of the forest.”  
  
“It’s not actually in the _middle_ of the –“  
  
“Tell me about your house.”  
  
Sirius sighed. “My ridiculously large and intimidating house.”  
  
“Yes, that. What do you think, how many quids did your lot pay for the silverware?”  
  
“I think everything in that house has passed at least five generations,” Sirius said, “and I have no idea. Stop teasing me.”  
  
“It’s called conversation. And you have to keep talking because I’m actually quite nervous and I want something else to think about. How many servants do you have?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“Fuck you.”  
  
“I really don’t,” he said, “but I can try to count them if you like.”  
  
“Just be quiet and walk,” Remus said.  
  
“But you can’t panic.”  
  
“I’ll panic if I want to,” Remus said and then took a sharp breath and threw a glance at him. They had almost reached the forest now. Five or ten more minutes and then they would be there. “ _Sirius._ Please don’t ask me when we are there.”  
  
“Ask you what?”  
  
“You know _what._ ”  
  
“I can’t promise you that,” he said. His mouth felt very dry.  
  
“No one has ever…” Remus paused and swallowed. “No one has ever _anything._ So, you see, I don’t know how to. And it’s… my heart is racing.”  
  
“Yeah. Mine, too. I won’t ask.”  
  
“Thank you,” Remus said, his voice cracking a little.  
  
“Remus,” Sirius said, “I’m here now. And I want to. I want to kiss you. And everything else you wish.”  
  
“You don’t know how that makes me feel, you really don’t –“  
  
“Yes, I do.”  
  
“But you’ve kissed someone.”  
  
“I didn’t _like_ him,” he said and Remus kept watching him like he had been telling tales and Remus had desperately wanted to believe in them, “and I like you, a lot as you know, so it’s all different. My hands are very sweaty right now because even the thought of… you can try them if you want.”  
  
“Your sweaty hands,” Remus said with wide eyes, “no, thank you.”  
  
“We’re almost there.”  
  
“ _Shit._ ” Remus took a deep breath. They were walking under the trees now, and the forest was all quiet besides the sound of leaves moving in the wind. “Listen. I wasn’t going to do anything about it. I always knew I was different, I think even before I realised what it was, I always felt like a stranger. And then I realised that it was about… _this…_ ” Remus waved his right hand vaguely towards Sirius, “and I thought I was the unluckiest boy ever, because you know, I would never be with anyone. No one would ever touch me. I couldn’t bear getting married and all that we’re supposed to do, and also I could never find anyone whom I could be with. So that was it. I was going to stay in dad’s cottage and, like, work as long as I could. Not everyone gets married. There was this old man living in the edge of the village when I was a kid. He was probably seventy or something but he seemed like an ancient thing. I asked dad where his kids were and he said the man had never got married.”  
  
“You’d become like that,” Sirius said. “You idiot.”  
  
Remus glanced at him. “It’s _illegal._ You know that. I couldn’t just dream about meeting a man and sharing a cottage with him and –“  
  
“Yeah, fine, but I was there. The whole time, I was right there.”  
  
“ _There?_ Like, in your mansion?”  
  
“No,” he said, “yes, _shit,_ I meant… we could have met. You’d be playing in the village and I’d come and ask your name and you’d answer, and I’d ask what you were playing and you would tell me. And then we’d play together and we’d become friends and one day we’d realise it was more than that.”  
  
“My mom would never have let me play with you,” Remus said warily, “and nor would yours.”  
  
“I don’t care,” Sirius said, “it could have happened. And it _did_ happen, we are here now, aren’t we? I’m here now. And we’re there.”  
  
“What?” Remus asked and then drew a sharp breath. “ _Oh._ ”  
  
“Yes.” The shack had certainly been larger when Sirius had been a kid. Now he realised he was weirdly nervous about whether Remus liked it or not, which wasn’t the point _at all_ , the point was to have a place where they could… but he couldn’t think about that now, because he had promised not to ask Remus to. He swallowed and then walked to the door with hasty and not quite steady steps and Remus followed him. He had the key in his pocket. The lock creaked loudly, probably because it hadn’t been used in years until now twice in four days. He pushed the door open and saw his own footsteps in the dust covering the floor. He stepped inside and waited, and after what felt like a second after you hear the gunshot and wait to see if it hit you, Remus followed him.  
  
“So,” he said and broke into a cough. Certainly it was because of all the dust in the air. Remus stared at him with wild wide eyes and bit his lip. The voice of the door closing filled the whole shack. Sirius drew his fingers away from the handle, turned around and saw Remus’ chest rising and falling rapidly.  
  
“It’s quite dusty,” he said.  
  
“It’s fine,” Remus said, looking terrified.  
  
“I won’t ask you to do anything,” he said. “I promised. So, there’s another room, it’s very crappy and all, I don’t know how anyone could have lived here, but… I can show you if you want to.”  
  
“Stop talking,” Remus said, “and stay still.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“And don’t move.”  
  
He opened his mouth and then closed it again. Remus was looking at him straight in the eyes and then took a step closer, and the floor creaked, and the world kept quiet, and he thought he could feel every heartbeat inside his chest, they were loud in his ears and heavy against his ribs, he tried to count them _one two three four five_ but couldn’t concentrate, because Remus had now placed his palm on Sirius’ neck.  
  
“Stop staring at me,” Remus said, and when Sirius opened his mouth, “close your eyes.”  
  
He closed his eyes.  
  
There were warm shaky fingers on his skin. He hold his breath. Remus had to feel his pulse, and then Remus would know he was going to crack, he was, Remus’ fingertips were now slowly going downwards and then back up again, and Remus slid his hands into his hair, and oh, _oh,_ the boy in the trench had grabbed his hair but it had been nothing like this. He felt Remus’ fingers pressing against the back of his head, the floor creaked again, Remus’ hands dropped lower, now they were placed on his shoulders, and he felt Remus’ thumbs against his collarbones. He leant only a little forward, because Remus had to be there somewhere, so close that he could almost feel Remus’ warmth, and then he bit his lip as his knee cracked. Remus’ grip on his shoulders got firmer and he leaned against it and then he could hear Remus’ sharp breath and his own heart pounding indefinitely, and on it went, on and on, against all odds, and then Remus kissed him.  
  
_Fuck,_ he thought, _fuck fuck fuck -_  
  
It was nothing like with the boy in the trench.  
  
He held his eyes tightly shut and tried to grab Remus’ arms. Remus pushed his hands away but kept _thank God_ kissing him. And it was probably very stupid that he thought he could hear nothing but his own blood running through his head, because what Remus was doing was probably the most hesitant kiss in the whole history of kisses, it had to be, and still he felt like Remus had turned him upside down. He let his mouth open just a little and Remus kept placing slow, careful kisses on his upper lip and lower lip and the corner of his mouth. When he tried to tell Remus that he could, _you know, anything you like_ , Remus told him to shut up with a breathless voice and went back to kissing.  
  
“Please,” he muttered against Remus’ mouth.  
  
“Idiot,” Remus said and placed his palms on the back of Sirius’ neck, “you don’t have patience, like, _at all._ ”  
  
“I’m going to kiss you back now,” he said. He waited for something, probably a breathless insult, but Remus opened his mouth against his and he thought _oh, oh_ and kissed Remus back.  
  
There had been a nervous flutter in his stomach when he had kissed the boy in the trench, Mathew Watson, a tall guy who had had a bad eyesight and who had two weeks later lain on the ground with nothing else amiss besides the bright red stain on his coat and blank stare in his eyes. Sirius had kept running. And certainly this was the worst possible time to think about Mathew Watson, and he grabbed Remus’ shoulders and now Remus let him, and he kissed Remus because Remus was alive and would be, because the war was over, it was all over, it was, even if he sometimes still woke up in the middle of the night thinking he was there. _It’s over_ , he thought and kissed Remus once more, and then again, _it’s over, it’s over -_  
  
“Sirius –“  
  
“What?” he asked, _it’s over_ , but Remus placed both palms onto his chest and pushed him gently back.  
  
He opened his eyes.  
  
Remus was standing in front of him, his short hair as messy as it could get, cheeks flushed, mouth still half-opened and slightly red on the edges. Remus was staring at him and breathing hard and tugging his sleeves with hands that clearly were shaking, and he felt quite the same.  
  
“I have to go home,” Remus said.  
  
“ _Now?_ ”  
  
Remus only stared at him and then walked to the door. Sirius followed and was surprised to find out that his legs were still working. The forest looked exactly the same, which was weird, like nothing had happened at all. He had to hasten his steps to keep up with Remus whose limping was now the worst he had seen it so far. He considered asking Remus to slow down but it seemed like a very poor idea.  
  
“It was brilliant,” he said instead, “the kissing.”  
  
“Don’t talk about it,” Remus said, turning to watch him and almost falling down. “ _Shit._ Don’t talk about it when we’re… out.”  
  
“There’s no one but us here,” Sirius said. “It was the best thing. _You_ are the best thing. And we’re alive. We can do anything.”  
  
Remus glared at him like one glares at a crazy man.  
  
“We can have a house in London,” Sirius said, “or perhaps just a flat if I have to give up the money. A small flat for the two of us. And I’ll kiss you million times every day.”  
  
“You are –“, Remus paused and let out a dry and bewildered laugh.  
  
“I’m right,” he said, “I really am. If you keep the pace like that ‘till the cottage, you’re going to limp worse than ever and your dad’s going to know something happened.”  
  
Remus swore but slowed down a little. They were still walking too fast though, because Sirius couldn’t find anything to say until they were near to the village, and then they walked through it and he couldn’t exactly say _but we’ll kiss again, like, tomorrow_ or _the way you looked when you stared at me was, I don’t know, I can’t even tell you_. And then they were almost at Remus’ cottage and the front door was open.  
  
“ _Shit,_ ” Remus said and almost stopped.  
  
“So, he is home,” Sirius said, “it doesn’t matter, we can just say that we were walking –“  
  
“Walking? With my leg? Sure.”  
  
“Okay, then we walked to the hill to watch the scenery and we just lost the track of time –“  
  
“My lot doesn’t _watch the scenery,_ you git. We don’t have _time_ , because we have to _work._ And… sorry, I’m not saying that you’re… but you _are_ so rich that you can’t even… but it’s not about that. There’s no way to explain why I would spend my time with you.”  
  
“Friends,” Sirius said with a dry voice, “we’re friends.”  
  
“You own the land we live in,” Remus said, “we could never be friends. Walk past the cottage and go back home and I’ll figure out something to –“  
  
“Remus!”  
  
Remus bit his lip. There was a man standing in the doorway. Sirius knew he had seen Remus’ dad before, he had to have because they were almost neighbours, but he didn’t remember the man who looked old, tired and thin in worn clothes, and also very much like Remus. _So_ , Sirius thought _, this is how Remus is going to be in thirty years_ , except that Remus was going to limp and also Remus’ dad didn’t have the same haunted kind of sadness in the way he hold his mouth.  
  
“I’ll say hi to him,” Sirius said, “it will help,” and then he hastened his steps. He heard Remus hissing behind him and it very much sounded like an insult, but Remus couldn’t stop him without looking like a complete fool and he was certain Remus knew it. He walked to the front door and then smiled.  
  
“Good afternoon,” he said and shook Remus’ dad’s hand even though the man looked absolutely confused. “You must be Remus’ dad. Nice to meet you. I’m Sirius Black.”  
  
“I know who you are,” Remus’ dad said, “m’lord.”  
  
“Nonsense,” he said, “you don’t have to call me that unless my parents are listening. So, we were walking on the hills, it’s so beautiful out there this time of year.”  
  
“Dad,” Remus said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise it was that late –“  
  
“It’s fine, but… walking on the hills? With –“, Remus’ dad paused to glance at Sirius. Remus bit his lip. They looked quite the same, Remus and his dad, both so concerned.  
  
“We’re friends,” Sirius said and felt Remus tensing beside him, “your son and I. We met in the train when we got back home from the service. After times like those it’s so good to have someone to talk to, someone who has lived through it as well. I hope you approve, Mr. Lupin.”  
  
“Of course I _approve_ ,” Remus’ dad said with wide eyes that looked exactly like Remus’, “I couldn’t…”  
  
“I’m so glad,” Sirius said, “because actually there is another subject I’d like to bring to your attention. I’m going back to London, quite soon I think, certainly before Christmas, and I want Remus to come with me. If it’s fine with you, of course.”  
  
“ _What?”_ Remus asked.  
  
“Excuse me?” his father said, glancing between the two of them.  
  
“He’s not going to be able to do the work here,” Sirius said, ignoring the glances Remus was certainly throwing at him and the utter disbelieve in Mr. Lupin’s eyes, “with his leg being like that. But he’s clever, Mr. Lupin, you have a very clever and brilliant son. He could study in London. He could become a teacher or anything he wishes.”  
  
“ _Sirius_ ,” Remus said through gritted teeth.  
  
“M’lord,” Remus’ dad said, “this is all very… sudden.”  
  
“Call me Sirius,” Sirius said, “I know it’s a ridiculous name but what can you do, we all have our crosses to bear. You can think about it, of course. And Remus could visit you all the time. The trains are so fast these days, it takes no time at all to come here from London.”  
  
“But what -,” Remus’ dad paused, “or where –“  
  
“We can discuss the details later,” Sirius said, “I’m afraid my mother is going to be very stiff if I miss the dinner. I’ll come back tomorrow. If that’s fine with you, I mean.”  
  
“Of course,” Remus dad said, “but –“  
  
“I’ll go now,” he said and smiled at both of them. Remus looked rather angry but his dad looked merely confused, which was assuring. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”  
  
He didn’t wait for the answer. He turned around and started walking, and he thought he could feel Remus’ eyes watching him but of course that was just his imagination.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“You can’t do that,” Remus said, looking like he wanted to punch Sirius in the face, “you can’t just come to my home and say things like that to my dad –“  
  
“I come to your home all the time,” Sirius said, “and your dad just happened to be there.”  
  
“But –“, Remus said, staring at him, and he kind of wished Remus would have grabbed him on his shirt or something, anything, “but _London_ , you told him that you want to take me to London and that’s just _mad –_ “  
  
“No it’s not,” he said and Remus clenched his fists. “Okay, I should have let you ask him yourself. But the situation was perfect.”  
  
“The situation was crap,” Remus said, “and I’m not coming to London, you idiot, you keep forgetting that.”  
  
“You kissed me,” he said, and Remus’ mouth dropped half-open. Perhaps it hadn’t been the best idea to bring the kiss up now, because he really wanted Remus to do it again sometime, preferably soon, and now it seemed that Remus was trying to decide whether kissing Sirius had been a good choice after all. Or perhaps Remus was barely angry. That he could deal with. “I meant that you _like_ me. You really do. Of course you’re coming with me.”  
  
“I’m not,” Remus said, “and you can’t just talk to my dad and lure him and –“  
  
“ _Lure_ him?”  
  
“He can’t say no to you! You must know that! He’s your tenant, you could take our house and our lands and everything from us if you wanted to.”  
  
“Why the hell would I do that? And besides, I’m not the earl, my father is, and judging by how all this is going, I’m never going to –“  
  
“Shut up,” Remus said, “that’s just bullshit, you _are_ the earl’s son and you can’t just forget it and pretend that you’re going to give it up, of course you aren’t because it’s all you can do, you can’t even fucking cut potatoes, you know nothing about how people actually –“  
  
“I was in the war, the same as you, I was there and it was as muddy and dirty and terrible as it was for you and –“  
  
“Really?” Remus asked with a very cold voice. “So, they didn’t try to keep you from the front line because there was someone important who would miss you?”  
  
“I don’t know about that,” he said, “I really don’t, maybe they did or maybe we were all the same to them, we were just meat there, and you _know_ my brother died, don’t come telling me that I got it easy –“  
  
“I’m sorry,” Remus said, “about your brother, you know I am, but you can’t just… you keep thinking I’ll do exactly as you tell me, and I keep doing exactly as you tell me and that’s just… I have to stop this.”  
  
“Stop what? Stop liking me? Stop being queer?”  
  
“Don’t call me that,” Remus said and glanced around, but they were on the hill and there was no one to be seen, only a herd of sheep who clearly cared nothing about them.  
  
“But you are,” he said, “and I am too, and you kissed me and it was the most brilliant thing I’ve ever done, and I won’t give that up. You can teach me to cook. You can mock me as much as you want but I won’t give you up.”  
  
“You think you can do whatever you want,” Remus said, “but it doesn’t work like that. We have to stop.”  
  
“Fine,” he said, and the cold wind went through his coat and through his bones, it seemed, “ _fine_. Tell me you don’t like me anymore.”  
  
“It’s not about that!” Remus shouted at him, wide eyes and sad mouth and clenched fists. “It doesn’t matter that I love you, it doesn’t because it’s _impossible_ and I could never –“  
  
“ _What?_ ” he barked.  
  
“What?” Remus said with a shaky voice.  
  
“What did you say?”  
  
“I didn’t… I just…”  
  
“You said you love me.”  
  
“No,” Remus said, “yes, but it was just… I only said it because you have to realise it doesn’t _change_ anything, it’s still illegal and I can’t go to London with you and you can’t keep asking me to do impossible things because I’ll do them in the end and I can’t, I really can’t be that kind of a person, it’s too much and…”  
  
“But you love me.”  
  
Remus sat down onto the grass.  
  
“I love you too,” Sirius said, “I don’t know what it means but sure, I want to be with you in every way I can and as long as you let me, I think that covers it.”  
  
“Yeah,” Remus said and closed his eyes, “I think it does.”  
  
“It doesn’t have to be London. We could go to York or Manchester or anywhere you like. Or we can stay here if you insist, though I’m going to have to figure out how to get rid of my parents and it will be more difficult for us, living together in a small place like this. But sure. If you like.”  
  
“We can’t be together here,” Remus said with a voice that had run out of everything, “someone will figure it out sooner or later. It would be easier to hide something like this in London.”  
  
“Mom will be happy to see me go. I can call the staff in our town house and we can leave a day after tomorrow.”  
  
“You’re mad.”  
  
“So you keep saying. Can we go to the shack?”  
  
“Why?” Remus asked, watching him from the ground with tired eyes.  
  
“You said you love me, you git. I need a kiss with that.”  
  
“ _Sirius._ ”  
  
“And anything else you like. You could sleep with me. There’s a bed in there. It’s narrow and creaking and probably full of dust but it’ll do. You can have me there.”  
  
“I don’t know how to.”  
  
“I think you’re supposed to –“, he began, and then he pressed his mouth shut when he saw the look on Remus’ face. “Or I can touch you. Anywhere you like.”  
  
“No one has ever –“, Remus said and swallowed. “You know that I’ve never done anything of this.”  
  
“Me neither,” he said, “I told you. I know nothing about anything. Come on, we can walk there and figure it out.”  
  
“I was prepared to never be with anyone,” Remus said but stood up, and Sirius’ heart was clearly getting busier as Remus started walking towards the forest with slow steps, “I didn’t even think about that so much anymore, I was so sure I was never going to…”  
  
“You are a lucky thing for meeting me,” Sirius said, following him, “and of course you were an idiot for giving it all up in the first place. You shouldn’t have. You should have known you’d meet someone.”  
  
“It seemed like the most improbable thing in the whole world.”  
  
“And here we are,” he said, walking so close to Remus that their arms brushed against each other.  
  
As they walked to the shack, he told himself to calm down, Remus wasn’t going to do it anyway, at least not all of it, so that there was no reason for this nervous tickle under his skin. There was no reason to picture how he would lie down onto the bed and Remus would sit down between his legs and push his knees gently apart, or perhaps people did it the other way round and Remus would hold him on his hips and perhaps place his palm on his back. He was quite certain it would hurt at first. He had tried with his own fingers a few times and it seemed like a very unpractical and tricky thing indeed but Remus would be _inside_ him, surely he could bear some pain for that. And the talk in the war had been that it was very good in the end, but of course those had been barely rumours and nervous talk and nobody had claimed to have done it themselves because nobody was into things like that.  
  
“What are you thinking about?”  
  
“No,” he said and then realised it wasn’t an answer. “I can’t tell you.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“I was…” he paused and swallowed, “I was thinking about how it’ll work.”  
  
“How it’ll work?”  
  
“You having me.” He glanced at Remus. Remus was watching him, and _oh God_ Remus had said he loved him, what a brilliant, absurd thing to say.  
  
“You’re concerned.”  
  
“No,” he said, “yes. I heard boys talking about it in the war. It was always something that someone else had done somewhere else and they only talked about it while drunk anyway. But I want to try, even if it hurts at first, so you don’t have to be scared about hurting me, I can take it, I’ll tell you if it’s too much –“  
  
“ _Sirius._ ”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You really want me to… do _that?_ We can just… touch each other, things like that, it’ll be easier.”  
  
“I really want to,” he said, “but…”  
  
“Tell me,” Remus said, a bit out of breath but it was probably because they had started walking faster. “You have to tell me what you’re thinking if you imagine that I’m going to do _that_ to you.”  
  
“I don’t want to be on my knees,” he said and then watched as Remus bit his teeth tightly together. “I want to see you. I don’t know if it can be done like that. When those boys were talking about it –“  
  
“I want to see you face,” Remus said. “You look like an American film star, don’t you remember? Of course I want to see your face.”  
  
“Good,” Sirius said. His laughter sounded quite nervous.  
  
“You can lie on your back,” Remus said, “we can… _oh, fuck,_ we’re really talking about this now.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I thought we were going to… _kiss_ , and then perhaps… perhaps you could have opened my shirt, and all this time I’ve been thinking that I should tell you I have scars, like, a lot of them. The grenade went off quite near and there was glass and I was lucky not to get anything else than my leg wrecked but it’s not pretty. I was thinking about that, because you would be shocked if you just took my shirt off and then saw how I look, and you were thinking about…”  
  
“I’ll take your shirt off,” he said, “and of course I don’t mind scars, don’t be an idiot.”  
  
“Sometimes it seemed just so unfair,” Remus said, not looking at him, “that I should be the way I am, and I didn’t care about… about sleeping with someone, it was pretty easy to accept that I would never, but the touching... that you could have someone to touch you, just touch, certainly that isn’t supposed to be forbidden and it seemed so unfair that I couldn’t have even that.”  
  
“We have to go to London. I don’t care about getting married and having kids and all that but I want to sleep in the same bed. Unless you snore.”  
  
“We can’t sleep in the same bed, Sirius. We’ll get arrested if someone comes to visit.”  
  
“We’ll have another bed, of course, just for the show, and we can… _Remus._ ”  
  
“So,” Remus said and stopped. “We’re here.”  
  
“We can lock the door,” Sirius said and kept walking. “I have the key.”  
  
“It seems suspicious if someone comes looking for us.”  
  
“No one’s going to be looking for us,” he said, already at the front door. “Come on.”  
  
“I don’t know what to do,” Remus said when the door was locked and they were standing in the middle of the tiny room.  
  
“I’ll undress you,” Sirius said, “if you let me.”  
  
Remus nodded.  
  
For some reason Sirius hadn’t really considered this part. His fingers kept shaking and he had to concentrate on unbuttoning Remus’ shirt. When he placed his palm on Remus’ pale freckled skin full of narrow scars, Remus’ ragged breath seemed to go straight through his own skin. He pushed Remus’ shirt carefully aside and let it fall down onto the floor, and Remus didn’t look like he minded.  
  
“How does this feel?” he asked, both palms on Remus’ sides. Remus had grabbed his shoulders and was now watching him through half-closed eyelids.  
  
“Good. It’s good.”  
  
“How good?”  
  
“Fuck you,” Remus said and smiled just a little, “fuck you, Sirius. You could kiss me too.”  
  
“Now?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Like this?” he asked, slid his palms onto Remus’ back and pulled him closer. Remus opened his mouth against his and for a second he thought _I can’t do this, I don’t know how_ , and then Remus pushed his fingers into his hair and he forgot to think.  
  
There was something he wanted to say but his mouth was rather busy.  
  
Remus tucked his shirt and finally got it off him and he hadn’t thought it would feel so _insane_ , having someone undress you, standing still in a cold room when someone kissed your jaw and neck and run his fingers on your bare skin.  
  
“What are you doing?” he asked when Remus' palm was on his stomach and going downwards.  
  
“Can I?” Remus asked.  
  
“Yes,” he said, “yes, yes, but what are you _doing_ , you aren’t going to – _oh –“  
  
_ “I just want to,” Remus said in an absent voice, holding Sirius in one hand and tucking Sirius’ trousers down with the other, “I just want to, just to hold you, to know how it feels –“  
  
“It’s good,” he said and bit his lip, “but Remus, _Remus,_ it’s too good, you can’t move your hand or I’ll – _Remus_ –“  
  
“Isn’t it the point,” Remus said, mouth pressed against his cheek, “I thought it was what we were doing.”  
  
“I thought you were going to… that you were… that you would… you would sleep with…“  
  
“You were scared that it would hurt. We have time. Would you just… would you…”  
  
“What? I can’t –“  
  
“You can come onto my hand,” Remus said, “please, _please,_ just –“  
  
“But _you_ –“  
  
“Later,” Remus said and tightened his fingers, and Sirius tried to bit back the moan. “You first.”  
  
“I would have let you… _Remus_ –“  
  
“I know,” Remus said, “and you will, but now come on, _come on_ , I’ll hold you, just –“  
  
“ _Remus_ ,” he said, “I’m going to –“  
  
“Yeah,” Remus said and kissed his neck and placed a firm hand on his lower back, “I’m here, I’m right here, you _can_ , I’m sorry I tried to push you away, I’m sorry I didn’t believe you, I was too scared, I was – _Sirius –_ “  
  
He sat down onto the floor and closed his eyes. Remus was now kneeling in front of him and there was mess on his thighs and probably on Remus’ hand too and he was vaguely surprised that this had actually happened but also he was too tired to think. Remus sat down next to him and pulled his fingers through his hair, and he leant against Remus’ hand.  
  
“You were supposed to have me,” he said and breathed in, “in the bed.”  
  
“Next time,” Remus said, “next time I will.”  
  
“Good,” he said. “I was a bit scared.”  
  
“Yeah,” Remus said, “I know.”  
  
“I’ll do the same to you. With my hand. In a second.”  
  
“No rush,” Remus said, but his voice was a bit shaky.  
  
In something like half a minute he had Remus sitting against the wall, feet on the floor, knees apart, and he was naked and watching Sirius with wide eyes and his chest was falling and rising, and the noises he made when Sirius placed his fingers around him were brilliant. Sirius thought he was probably quite clumsy and that this was actually much more difficult to do to someone else, because it was hard to figure out when you were holding them too tight or when the pace was right, but then Remus moaned and he pretty much stopped thinking. He didn’t know what to say so he didn’t say anything, and Remus watched him and came and then pulled his fingers away when he himself didn’t seem to remember how to do it. His hand was sticky. Remus seemed to be laughing without a sound.  
  
“Did you like it?”  
  
“We can go to London,” Remus said, leaning the back of his head against the wall. “But not right now. Maybe in a week or two. I’ll talk to dad. And I need to get a job there, I can’t just… sleep in your bed.”  
  
“Of course,” Sirius said. “You have to study, though. You want to.”  
  
“Yeah, but –“  
  
“Did I do it right?”  
  
“I want to kiss you,” Remus said, “but I can’t move.”  
  
“I can’t get to you over your bony legs.”  
  
“You’re in between them, you idiot.”  
  
“I don’t know how you think you can insult me when you just –“  
  
“Come here,” Remus said, “just come here.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
“Are you alright?”  
  
Remus glanced at him. “Yeah.”  
  
“Are you sad?”  
  
“Stop asking.”  
  
“I’m sorry. But it’s not really that far. You can come back next weekend if you want to and also you can –“  
  
“ _Sirius._ Stop asking questions.”  
  
“I’m nervous.”  
  
“I know. It’s going to be fine. Now shut up.”  
  
“You’re going to hate the house, though. I hate it too. But we don’t have to stay for long. We’ll have our own place and –“  
  
“Please stop talking now.”  
  
“We met like this,” he said, and Remus took a deep breath and finally looked at him, “in the train. You were sitting in front of me. I couldn’t decide if I remembered you from the village. And you looked very sad somehow.”  
  
“You were irritating,” Remus said in a low voice, “you kept talking to me.”  
  
“So nothing has changed.”  
  
“Nothing has changed,” Remus said but smiled a little. “Just let me be sad for a few hours. We can talk when we’re there.”  
  
“I can’t really bear the whole journey to London without talking. I can’t believe you came.”  
  
“ _What?_ ”  
  
“I didn’t think you would,” he said. “You were so sure. You kept saying that you couldn’t leave and I kept thinking that you have to, because I can’t bear it if you don’t, but also that you probably aren’t going to because it would be too good and things like that don’t happen.”  
  
Remus stared at him with wide eyes. ”Things like that don’t happen? You literally told me they do. That we had been in a fucking _war._ ”  
  
“Yes,” he said, “but it seemed crazy to even hope for something like that.”  
  
“But I only –“, Remus paused and glanced around, but the old man sitting next to them didn’t look interested at all. “I only believed in it because you did. _I_ thought it was crazy.”  
  
“But now we are going.”  
  
“Now we are going,” Remus said, biting at his lip. “I can’t wait to get there.”  
  
“I know,” Sirius said.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to check my facts for this story but if you spot anything going amiss feel free to point that out (aaaand also if you spot prepositions gone wrong, because that sure happens). Also you can say hi on [tumblr](http://toyhto.tumblr.com) if you want to!


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